The Fast Crowned by the Festival

*A retelling based on **Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era** by J. E. Esslemont, which describes the Bahá'í calendar, feasts and Fast. Passages in quotation marks are quoted from that book, except the words from the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.*

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Dr. J. E. Esslemont first learned of the Bahá'í teachings in December 1914 and soon began putting what he learned into a book. In the winter of 1919–1920 he spent two and a half months as the guest of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in Haifa, and the Master discussed the manuscript with him. The book became *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*.

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Among much else, Esslemont describes the Bahá'í year. It has nineteen months of nineteen days, and the Báb "named the months after the attributes of God." Four days, or five in a leap year, are added "between the eighteenth and nineteenth months in order to adjust the calendar to the solar year." The new year, "like the ancient Persian New Year, is astronomically fixed, commencing at the March equinox (usually March 21)."

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The last weeks of the year follow a set order. First come the intercalary days, which "are specially devoted to hospitality to friends, the giving of presents, ministering to the poor and sick, et cetera." Bahá'u'lláh fixed their place in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, before the month of fasting, and called them "these days of giving that precede the season of restraint."

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Then comes the Fast. "The nineteenth month, following immediately on the hospitality of the intercalary days, is the month of the fast. During nineteen days the fast is observed by abstaining from both food and drink from sunrise to sunset." Because the month ends at the March equinox, Esslemont notes, the Fast always falls in the same season. Its reality, he writes, lies not in going without food but "in the abstention from the desires and lusts of the flesh, and in severance from all save God."

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When the Fast ends, Naw-Rúz begins. Esslemont lists it with Riḍván and the anniversaries of the Birth of the Báb and of Bahá'u'lláh and of the Báb's Declaration as "the great joy-days of the year for Bahá'ís." In Persia, he adds, they were kept "by picnics or festal gatherings at which music, the chanting of verses and tablets, and short addresses suitable to the occasion are contributed by those present."

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He also quotes a talk 'Abdu'l-Bahá gave on the Feast of Naw-Rúz in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1912. A holy day, the Master said, "should not be neglected, nor deprived of results by making it a day devoted to the pursuit of mere pleasure." On such a day "the friends of God ... must leave tangible philanthropic or ideal traces that should reach all mankind and not pertain only to the Bahá'ís." "Therefore, my hope is that the friends of God, every one of them, may become as the mercy of God to all mankind."

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*This is a retelling. For the full account, see **Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era** by J. E. Esslemont, the sections on the calendar, feasts and Fast.*

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